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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Repair of Fresh Grill building to begin in Bethesda

Greenhill Capital has retained the architecture firm of Steven J. Karr, AIA, Inc. to repair damage to its 4905 and 4909 Fairmont Avenue buildings, which once housed Fresh Grill and Dansez! Dansez!. The damage was caused "by an adjacent high rise building's deep foundation excavation operations," referring to the construction of the Bainbridge Bethesda luxury apartment tower next door. The damage, which led to a lengthy legal fight, was diagnosed in a prior report by Karr's firm.

The work will include foundation repairs, reconstruction of load-bearing masonry walls, and replacement of steel roof joists. In addition, alterations will be made to prepare the structures for tenants, and to repair and update the front facades. These changes are also in preparation for an extensive update to the entire Lot 667 property Greenhill owns, which has also been designed by Karr. That makeover is expected to reinvigorate several portions of Fairmont, and Norfolk and St. Elmo Avenues.

The estimated cost of the repairs is $500,000. Sigal Construction is the contractor, and the work is expected to be completed by May 2016.

Was the "Damaged" Red Tomato building also a Greenhill property? It's been sitting fallow for well over a year at this point too. Then again if you can just sue the other developers who are actually improving Bethesda, why bother trying to make money on your own?

All this was part of Greenberg's war on the Bainbridge project. But, when you toss out tenants for "damages", you get a reputation. And Greenberg's reputation as a landlord wasn't that great to begin with.

War on Bainbridge?Bainbridge damaged the adjoining properties when excavating, right?Bainbridge had a lot of shoddy work: the tables in the midblock walkway weren't installed even and remember the driveway on Fairmont that wasn't properly aligned? Vehicles scrape on that bump.